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I: A New World
Xena It’s over. After 10 long years, it’s finally over. Those damn robots and programs were pretty persistent. I’ll give them that. But as soon as I became the new Avatar, the tide was finally shifted against them, but it took a while. The robots first tried to gain an advantage over us by keeping control over the 13th Dimension, or the Digital World. This was a major problem for us, simply because most of our technology relied on the Digital World to function. It wasn’t like we could just throw an army in there either. The robots killed more than half of the entire human population on the first day of the war alone. So, we had to be careful with what little remained. I had to retake most of the Digital World on my own. It would have been impossible if I didn’t have any of my Avatar powers. Even with my heightened abilities, taking on an entire army of robots was no easy feat. There were plenty of points when I almost died. Luckily, my increased abilities made me great at healing injuries. I would have surely perished otherwise. Having the K.R.E.W. to help me out would have been nice, but I’d rather not talk about them. After about seven years, I managed to expel most of the robots and programs out of the Digital World. I put up plenty of barriers, or firewalls, to prevent them from going back. I had gotten used to fighting robots in the Digital World, so fighting them in the physical world took some adjusting. After some time, I got the hang of it. Unfortunately, I didn’t adjust fast enough. The robots knew that I was spending most of my energy fighting in the Digital World, so they staged a major siege against the remaining population. The scattered groups of people did a valiant job defending themselves, but there was only so much they could do against machinery. In the physical world, robots felt no pain, and they could operate non-stop. Because of all this, our numbers continued to dwindle. At one point, we were down to only one billion people. Even with my powers, there was little I could do to stop their organized assault. Fortunately, the remaining world leaders formed an alliance, and we combined all of our forces into one army. This had a risk to it. If the robots successfully defeated this army, then we would have nothing left to defend ourselves. Obviously, it was a risk we were all willing to take. Our fused army proved to be strong enough to end the robots’ assault, and that was when we began our counteroffensive. We attacked various robot strongholds, and although our losses were great, theirs were much, much worse. This pattern continued for three years until today, September 25, 3023. We finally defeated the robots in their final stronghold, New York City. As I expected, everyone celebrated. Not only had we just won the war against our potentially greatest foe in history, but we staved off extinction. And we broke our dependence of artificial life. It was a little funny seeing people that were normally serious completely let themselves loose. In the past, I would’ve have been more drunk than any of them, but something changed me. I feel like something took away my ability to let my guard down. My ability, to be human. I walked away from city’s celebration, and I found myself alone on a cliffside. The landscape brought flashbacks to my adventures in the Digital World a decade prior. I still missed them, my friends. A tap on my shoulder brought me back to reality. “Hey, Ms. Avatar? Anybody home?” a soft voice said. It was Amber, formerly known as Electrode. She’s the only person from the K.R.E.W. that survived our mission to delete the X.E.P.H.Y.R. We became very close this past decade. She’s really helped me to master my abilities. I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to her. “Oh, hey Amber,” I replied gravely. “I didn’t know anyone else was here.” She looked at me with confused worry. “What’s up with you Xena? We just defeated the greatest threat to mankind. You should be celebrating. C’mon back to the city with me.” “I’m sorry, but, I really just want to be alone.” Amber walked up closer to me, and she held me tight. “Xena, what’s bugging you? You can tell me.” “I just wish they were here to enjoy this day with us,” I sighed. “Yeah, me too.” She didn’t say anything else. We just stood together staring at the sunset for what felt like hours. I still felt terrible, but it was nice having a friend like Amber around. She always knew when I needed a hug. Eventually, it did get dark, but the stars kept us occupied. We named various constellations, even though we probably got them all wrong. It was the first time in years that I had a carefree night. But, I still didn’t feel right. Even being near Amber wasn’t fixing my inner turmoil. I broke out of our hug, and stood up. I could barely see her face in the dark, but I could tell she looked surprised. “Xena, what’s wrong?” “It’s complicated,” I replied. “Sorry, I have to go.” I left her there. Even after I left, I felt her concerned eyes staring at me. What could I have done though? There was no way I could explain to her the pain I felt inside. Whatever was bothering me, I had to figure out on my own. I went back to the city, but I didn’t even bother trying to sleep. So, I went to a local bar to drown my sorrows in alcohol. I looked at the time. Midnight. Seemed fitting. After one shot, nothing changed. After five shots, I began to feel a little better. After twelve shots, I felt fucking fantastic. I left the bar pretty trashed, but I felt like I was on top of the world for once. I felt so great that I didn’t even notice the three sketchy looking men approach me from behind until one of them grabbed my ass. I turned around to slap him, but I ended up falling instead. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I knew that they were laughing. Two of them picked me up, and they carried me to a dark alley. “Well this is embarrassing,” I thought to myself. “I basically have the powers of a god, yet I’m about to get raped by three low lives. How am I going to get myself out of this one?” Next time on 13th Redux... Category:Chapters